On August 7, NASA first color image taken on Mars by the rover “Curiosity.” The view is of the north wall of the rim of the Gale Crater. While it doesn’t look like much, it’s a significant technological achievement in the history of both NASA and the U.S. space program.
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“India needs to stop strutting on the world stage like it’s a great power and focus on its deep problems within.”
– Ramachandra Guha, an Indian historian, after a massive grid failure cut power to more than 600 million people over a 2-day period.
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This is a great piece about a return to the more self-sustaining lifestyle that has kept humanity alive for millions of years.
The Great Turning – Joanna Macy | Center for Ecoliteracy.
The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization.
The ecological and social crises we face are caused by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth. This self-destructing political economy sets its goals and measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits—in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste.
A revolution is under way because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world. We have the technical knowledge, the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal…
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Can we give this damn Chick-fil-A crap a rest now? I mean, children are going to bed hungry every night in America, and we’re still worried what some right-wing nut job said?
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Yosemite National Park is known primarily for its stunning vistas, but it’s also known for 8 manmade bridges; most of which span the Merced River. The oldest is Yosemite Creek Bridge, which was built in 1922, and sits below Yosemite Falls. All 8 of them were placed on National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1977, but that apparently hasn’t guaranteed them full protection. Three of them, in particular, face demolition: the Stoneman, the Sugar Pine and the Ahwahnee. Environmentalists want them removed to help the flow of the Merced, while historians claim the bridges are examples of early rustic architecture and therefore, are too culturally important to destroy.
Despite the park’s 1,200 square miles of wilderness, 95% of the 4 million annual visitors stay in the one-by-eight-mile valley, where the Half Dome and El Capitan walls of granite, stands of pines and stair-step waterfalls are the main attractions. Now these 3 bridges have become a focal point. What happens to them is anyone’s guess, but the matter is sure to be contentious.
“The bridges have become a proxy war for those who want to keep the same level of visitor amenities and those who want to see reduced infrastructure,” says Anthony Veerkamp of the NTHP. “They are treating them more as infrastructure rather than historic resources that need to be planned for their own remarkable value.”
Stoneman Bridge
Sugar Pine Bridge
Ahwahnee Bridge
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Rock City is near Ruby Falls in the Lookout Mountain region of far northern Georgia, near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Supposedly you can see 7 states from the highest vantage point atop the mountain – a claim first made during the Civil War – but that’s never been proven scientifically. Regardless, almost every point on the mountain provides stunning vistas with massive and ancient rock formations and over 400 native plant species. Rock City is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year as an official tourist attraction. Unfortunately, they’ll only be open through September 3, but here’s a small collection of pictures of this incredible locale.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch died August 6 in Los Angeles. He had just turned 68 on June 6. He collapsed Monday after a brief illness.
Admitted to Julliard at age 7, Hamlisch fell in love with the theatre and eventually became one of America’s most renowned songwriters and musical composers. He is among a handful of artists to win every major creative prize, some more than once, including an Oscar for “The Way We Were” (1973) and a Tony and a Pulitzer for “A Chorus Line” (1975). Other works include the score for the 1973 film The Sting and the song “Nobody Does It Better” from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.
He often teamed up with fellow lyricist Carol Bayer Sager and singer Barbra Streisand.
In more recent years, Mr. Hamlisch also became an ambassador for music, traveling around the country and performing and giving talks at schools. He often criticized the cuts in arts education.
“I don’t think the American government gets it,” he said during an interview at the Orange County High School of the Arts in Santa Ana, Calif. “I don’t think they understand it’s as important as math and science. It rounds you out as a person. I think it gives you a love of certain things. You don’t have to become the next great composer. It’s just nice to have heard certain things or to have seen certain things. It’s part of being a human being.”
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Chief Writing Wolf 
Tweets of the Day
In response Sunday’s shootings in Wisconsin, two of the assholes who commandeer the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas had this to say:
For their reference:
Matthew 7:1 – “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
And, just so they’ll also know, I’m only practicing my right to free speech.
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Tagged as Oak Creek Wisconsin, Sikh temple shootings, stupid comments, Westboro Baptist Church